[[quoteright:350:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/Battlefleet_Gothic.jpg]][[caption-width-right:350:There is no peace among the stars...]]

What happens when the people behind ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}'' decide to make a game about spaceships.

'''''Battlefleet Gothic''''' takes everything [[RuleOfCool cool]] about [[StandardStarshipScuffle naval combat]] [[AnachronismStew throughout history]], and mixes it with the gothic aesthetic and unending, chaotic [[MemeticMutation grimdarkness]] of the ''Warhammer 40,000'' universe. Joyfully embracing SpaceIsAnOcean in every way possible, the game throws together vast hypertech spaceships, Napoleonic line tactics and broadsides, torpedoes and torpedo boats, sailing, [[EarthShatteringKaboom planet-splitting]] weapons, ramming and boarding actions, {{Old School Dogfight}}s, sea shanties and alien monsters.

The Imperial Navy, the focus of much of the game's art and background, is the very definition of CoolButInefficient. Imperial capital ships are millennia-old vessels resembling kilometres-long Gothic cathedrals, with spikes and spires for sensor masts, covered with pointless bling in the form of giant skulls or mile-high statues of eagles made of solid gold. They are filled with millions of press-ganged ratings and chanting priest-mechanics, loading gigantic shells by the back-breaking labour of thousands and unloading broadsides from gun decks the size of towns. Maintenance is ritualised, tech-adepts praying to machines they don't understand, anointing them with sacred unguents and beating them with holy wrenches. Warships are so old, so vast and so complex they develop their own cultures; entire societies of feral humans, the descendents of lost crewmen, lurk in forgotten decks.

The rulebook focuses on one campaign in particular, the twenty-year Gothic War, one of [[TabletopGame/BlackLegion Abaddon the Despoiler's]] [[GeneralFailure many, many]] diabolical attempts to take over the galaxy. This scheme involves the Gothic Sector being cut off from the rest of the Imperium by warp storms, a ''lot'' of spiky warships, and six ancient space stations known as the Blackstone Fortresses...

As with all of Games Workshop's {{Gaiden Game}}s, ''Battlefleet Gothic'' enjoyed several months of publicity in stores and White Dwarf magazine before essentially dropping off the radar, new rules and models only occasionally being brought out. It was published by Games Workshop's Specialist Games division (and was, generally speaking, their most successful game) until it, along with the rest of the Specialist Games line, was discontinued in 2013.

In 2015 a video game adaptation was announced, titled ''Battlefleet Gothic: Armada''. It is being developed by Tindalos Interactive and published by Creator/FocusHomeInteractive.

Being set in the ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}'' universe, the game features a large number of the tropes on that page, as well as employing setting and gameplay tropes of its own.----!!''Battlefleet Gothic'' provides examples of the following tropes:

* AuthorityEqualsAsskicking: Abaddon, who being a ship, along with his retinue of [[EliteMooks Chaos Terminators]], gives it a bonus against boarding actions* TwoDSpace: [[JustifiedTrope Justified]], or at least [[AcceptableBreaksFromReality necessary]]; it's pretty damn hard to play a tabletop wargame in three dimensions. On top of this, the rulebook explains that the ships actually occupy an infinitesimally small dot at the exact center of their base stands and allows them to move 'through' each other to represent the fact that they are at differing 'altitudes'. It also mocks the need to represent 3D combat as 3D -- as the book puts it, 3D is basically just a range modifier. Yeah, there's a bit more to it, but shut up and buy the plastic already.* AncestralWeapon: Ancestral spaceships.* ApocalypseHow: From the main batteries of most cruisers, which can inflict regional catastrophes, to the combined efforts of three Blackstone Fortresses, which can supernova a star, Gothic has one at every level.* TheAsteroidThicket* BadBoss: Abaddon, per standard. Aside from the YouHaveFailedMe below, Chaos Lords can't be used on the same ship as him because they're too scared of him.* CasualInterstellarTravel: The Eldar use the Webway to travel, rather than flying through hell, and during the Gothic War allow Imperial ships to use it. Necrons have inertialess drives to attain FTL speeds.** Otherwise averted, because, y'know, you're ''literally [[HyperspaceIsAScaryPlace going through hell]].'' Except the Tau, they just skirt around it, with the result of being much slower than other sides (their drive speed is typically 1/5 of Imperium's), but being ''much'' safer, more reliable (speed is relatively constant), and doesn't need psychic on board to guide the ship (which Tau lacks).* CoolShip: Every ship.* CoolButInefficient" ''Everything.''** Chaos warships are essentially Imperial vessels ten thousand years past their use-by date, with added mutations, daemons and an internal culture of insanity, backstabbing, blood sacrifices, torture and random slaughter.** Eldar ships are fragile vessels with solar sails, needing to be angled to the nearest sun to work most efficiently. Yes, ''tacking'' in ''space.''*** Solar sails can [[http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~diedrich/solarsails/intro/tacking.html 'tack' towards a star]], in much the same way a sailing ship can tack against the wind.** Ork ships are essentially improvised weapons (that work because the Orks ''[[ClapYourHandsIfYouBelieve think they can work]]''), bolted together out of scrap by lunatics.** Tyranid "vessels" are living organisms, with much of their armament being claws, blades, teeth and tentacles on a ridiculous scale. ''Even in space'', they try to jump on you and bite your face off.* CombatTentacles: Tyranids mount these on ''spaceships''.* EarthShatteringKaboom: The [[ExactlyWhatItSaysOnTheTin Planet Killer]] specializes in these.** Two Blackstone fortresses working together can destroy a planet. Three cause a sun to go supernova.* EliteMooks: Space Marines and their Chaos counterparts, as putting them on a ship gives it a better leadership rating. Among them there are also terminator marines, which help with boarding actions.* EnemyMine: Anybody siding with anybody against anybody, with the sole exception of an Adeptus Arbites ship (yes, they have one) siding with the Imperial Navy. Even the Astartes don't like working with the Navy.* FixedForwardFacingWeapon: Some ships have a nose mounted main cannon. Ork ships quite often have a large main gun, and the Imperium has the Nova Cannon, which is a massive mass driver that runs through most of the ship and fires building-sized projectiles at relativistic speeds.* FragileSpeedster: Eldar ships go faster than anyone else's, but have next to no armor or damage resistance.* GaidenGame: One of several "Specialist Games" in the ''TabletopGame/{{Warhammer 40000}}'' universe.* GalacticConqueror: Abaddon the Despoiler, were he not a...* GeneralFailure: Abaddon has managed to lead thirteen Black Crusades, attacks by nine legions of daemonically superpowered space marines and hundreds of millions of cultists, to failure.** That is at least how Fanon tends to depict him due to GW's inability to tell a story until 6th edition. Now it is clear that the only attempts to "March to the Heart of Terra" was the 13th Black Crusade while the rest of them were (relatively) limited operations with a specific goals in mind. Said 12th Black Crusade, the Gothic War was an attempt to capture and/or neutralize Blackstone Fortresses. At the start Imperium had 6. Now Abby has 2, Imperium has none and defensive abilities of the Gothic Sector are greatly diminished. * GlassCannon: The Eldar can dish it out. They can't take it. Pretty standard for them** The Tau would also qualify, with extremely powerful long-range ordinance, but weak broadside firepower and a vulnerability to boarding actions.* HyperspaceIsAScaryPlace: "Scary" does not even ''begin'' to cover it...* LightningBruiser: Necron ships, which has the fastest movement consistent movement, pack a heavy punch, and are pretty durable.* LivingShip: Tyranid ships.* LongRangeFighter: The Tau take this to the point of CripplingOverspecialization, where they have only minimal broadside firepower and are extremely vulnerable to boarding actions. However, maneuvering to take advantage of those weaknesses is tricky, because the Tau will do their best to use their devastating long-range [[FixedForwardFacingWeapon spinal armaments]] and extremely [[MacrossMissileMassacre smart and nimble missile salvos]] to cripple anyone who tries an uncoordinated charge. * MacrossMissileMassacre: Many ships can fire salvos of torpedos across the gulfs of space. While these can be devastating when they hit, they travel slowly compared to most weapons, and can be shot down by SpaceFighter squadrons and capital ship point defense while en route. The Tau, added in a later supplement, are especially good at these.* MadnessMantra: The Chaos warship Killfrenzy, so named because it continually broadcasts an endless loop of "KILLFRENZY KILLFRENZY KILLFRENZY" on all channels.* NegativeSpaceWedgie: The Eye of Terror, through which Abaddon and the Chaos fleets attack the Materium; rules for a number of other "celestial phenomena" are featured, few of them pleasant.* RammingAlwaysWorks: Many Imperial and all Ork vessels have heavily armoured prows, designed with intimately connecting with other warships in mind. The Ork "Brute" ram ship is designed ''specifically for ramming'', consisting of a gigantic armoured prow, a powerful engine and minimal weaponry, they are perhaps the least subtle device in the entire 40k universe.** They are a spaceship sized woodchipper on a giant set of engines with some guns. No frills, just a solid metallic mass of "get over there and make holes where no spaceship should have holes, one of which is the rough size and shape of ''this ship''." Screw kroozers, those things are the avatars of Mork (or was it Gork?).** Ramming is an Insane tactic as far as the other factions are concerned. Would you charge across ''tens of thousands'' of kilometers of empty space under enemy fire to hit the other guy, most probably after sustaining crippling damage? Insane. But as Imperium puts it, "Only the Insane have the strength to prosper, only those who prosper can judge what is Sane."*** Plus they have faith in the Emperor and armored prows to see them through it. Ramming from an Imperial or Ork ship can be brutally effective and is a great last hurrah for a crippled ship.*** --> "The prow is armoured because the stern never faces the enemy."* RuleOfCool: Reigns supreme.* SciFiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale: Very carefully averted. The actual models are [[AcceptableBreaksFromReality completely out of scale with the rest of the game]], distances being measured being from the centre of the ships' bases so that you can have nice looking miniatures without also requiring a spare country to play the game in. Base-contact in the game is "close range", generally of the order of ''tens of thousands'' of kilometres. This is also the reason you need a command check to ram another ship - the captain not only has to order a potentially suicidal course of action and make it stick with the crew, he also has to hit a target equivalent to headbutting a pinhead from a mile away...* ShoutOut--> War is Peace--> Freedom is Slavery--> Ignorance is Strength--> -''[[Literature/NineteenEightyFour Inscription across the ceiling of the Chapel Primus on the Divine Right]]''* SolarSail: The Eldar ships.* SpaceIsAnOcean: Taken to unbelievable levels. Some series call spaceships "boats", BFG has masts, sails and ''space shanties''.** That said, the physics of space is at least ''acknowledged''. Mostly.* SpaceOpera* SpacePirates: Orks and some Eldar, there are rules for the other factions to field a piratey force, excepting Space Marines.* SpaceSailing: Eldar ships.* SpikesOfVillainy: Chaos ships.* StandardSciFiFleet* StandardStarshipScuffle: The game is built around this trope, with its space combat firmly grounded in the SpaceIsAnOcean setting.* TurnBasedStrategy* UnnecessarilyLargeInterior* UnitsNotToScale: And then some!* WaveMotionGun: Not for nothing are this game's initials "BFG".* WeWillUseManualLabourInTheFuture* YouHaveFailedMe: An actual rule for Abaddon. If one of his vessels fails a command check with his re-roll, his ship will ''fire on it''.** If it happens on his ship, it takes damage because he and his retinue slaughter a portion of the crew.----